Showtime to Lob City; Lakers are playing second fiddle in LA
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02/06/2012 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - For the first time you can make a very strong argument that the red-headed stepchild across the hall at Staples Center has more star power than the mighty Lakers.
Adding Chris Paul to Blake Griffin has officially made Clippers basketball a happening in Hollywood for the first time.
History and tradition still mean something and the Lakers will always play the role of big brother to the Clips, sort of like the Yankees, who own the backpage of New York's tabloids no matter what the Mets do.
But, occasionally the lesser sibling can rise up and best big bro. Think the Darryl Strawberry/Doc Gooden-era in Queens.
It's far too early to crown the Clippers in the Pacific but we are now past the one-third mark of the season and it's the Clips standing atop the division, not the Lakers.
Kobe Bryant is still the best player to call Staples Center home and he arrived in his hometown of Philadelphia on Monday night 23 points shy of tying former teammate and nemesis Shaquille O'Neal (28,596 points) for fifth on the NBA's all-time scoring list.
He passed Shaq midway through the second quarter making shot after shot with a degree of difficultly that would make an Olympic gymnast blush before Doug Collins decided to challenge his entire supporting cast in what turned out to be a 95-90 Sixers win.
Collins ran the Army, Navy and Marines at Kobe every time he touched the basketball and to his credit, Bryant did what you are supposed to do -- move the ball. The Lakers got a ton of open looks and made some but missed more than their share.
By the fourth quarter Kobe's legs were gone and the amazing fadeaways started to miss their mark. In the 25th game of the season John Kuester, who was piloting the team for a suspended Mike Brown, played Bryant 44 minutes and did not sit him at all in the second half. The result was a 1-for-10 fourth quarter as the dogged defense of Andre Iguodala and friends finally took its toll.
"They just came after him immediately," Kuester said after the game, "and to Kobe's credit, what he did was try to get everyone involved. We had some great hits. When you are coming down to the end of the game, your margin of error is very small, and you have to take advantage of that. Things just didn't go our way."
Talk about a lack of foresight -- remember as impressive as the milestone that Bryant passed tonight is, it's also a stark reminder that he is a lot closer to the end than the beginning.
Whether there is enough tread left on the 33-year-old Bryant's tires to carry a flawed team on his back to another significant postseason run is up for debate.
He's obviously still one of the top players in the game, averaging a league- best 29.4 ppg coming into tonight's contest despite playing with a torn lunotriquetral ligament in his right wrist. But something is missing with these Lakers -- even with Bryant. The same air of invincibility is simply not there.
The Lakers certainly aren't the Washington Generals either but they no longer pack the kind of punch that scares anyone. The fact that the team is just 3-9 on the road should tell you all that you need to know.
"I think we just need to relax," Metta World Peace said. "When you've got guys like Fish [Derek Fisher] and Kobe, we need to get on their level and not worry. Late in the fourth quarter we need to stay consistent and relax, and everything will be alright."
Way too rosy an outlook if you ask me.
With no Phil Jackson on the bench and no Lamar Odom coming off it, it's become payback time for a lot of routs that are still fresh in the minds of quite a few rivals.
Brown has only been able to count on three players this season as he implements a more defensive-minded system, Bryant and his two 7-footers, Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol. The rest of the team including battle-tested veterans Fisher and World Peace, has lacked consistency and offered little production.
Tonight, Philadelphia's bench featuring big-time contributors like Lou Williams, Evan Turner and Thaddeus Young outscored the Lakers by a 49-16 margin. A well-rested Williams was Kobe-like in the fourth, netting 14 points and exploding in the last 3 1/2 minutes.
The only young player that has stepped forward for LA this season is rookie guard Andrew Goudelock, a College of Charleston product that has flashed at times but has a very limited ceiling as a player.
Like an aging but proud boxing champ, the Lakers still have a right hook that can quiver the liver and send just about anyone to the deck.
They showed that by opening their current six-game Grammy trip but beating a far-deeper Denver Nuggets team in the Rockies. A day later, however, Utah was waiting to take advantage and did exactly that, topping the Lakers 96-87 despite 26 points Bryant, 24 points and 16 rebounds from Gasol and 21 points and 12 boards from Bynum. The rest of the Lakers' team scored a paltry 16 points in Salt Lake City on 6-of-24 shooting.
They showed it again in the first half tonight when Bryant scored 24 and Bynum dominated the boards. But the fact that Kuester or Brown can't turn around and point to someone, anyone to give Bryant a breather for three or four minutes in the second half of a tightly contested game speaks volumes. The trust is simply not there.
"It is pretty basic," World Peace said. "I didn't think we need to change much. We have the guys to finish games. Right now, there is not a lot of consistency, so once we start playing with a little more consistency , we will win more consistently."
Perhaps but the Lakers lack of athleticism is glaring. LA had just two fast break points against the Sixers and forced only four turnovers.
Jackson foreshadowed these type of struggles when he walked away after last season. The former Lakers' mentor, of course, had collected championship rings at an unprecedented pace during his career, winning two in New York during the early 1970s as a player, garnering six more in Chicago with Michael Jordan and adding an additional five during the Kobe-era in LA.
"The ultimate winner," Jackson knows better than anyone what a winning environment looks like and when he retired after his club was run off by the Dallas Mavericks last season, it was an indictment of the organization and it's immediate future.
You can believe Jackson was burned out or the back problems had finally gotten to him if you want but Phil wasn't going anywhere if he thought the 2011-12 Lakers had a legitimate chance to bounce back and win another title. His ego would have liked to have put more distance between himself and Bill Russell as well as Red Auerbach.
The organization itself also flashed warning signs when it put together a high-profile deal to acquire Paul, one that would have sent both Odom and Gasol out of town before it was nixed by the NBA.
Yep, even the Lakers don't believe their contenders -- just don't tell Kobe.
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Kurt Warner to start, Matt Leinart to watch
Despite the debate that's swirling , Kurt Warner will remain the starting quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals, coach Dennis Green said today. The Arizona Cardinals are the +7 point underdog at online sportsbook MySportsbook.com for this Sunday's game.
Green's comment came in a statement released by the team following an ESPN report that Green decided that rookie Matt Leinart would replace Warner as starter for Sunday's game at Atlanta.
"Generally talking about the starting lineup is not something we do," Green told the AP. "However, given the speculation that was out there we want to make it clear. We're disappointed after last week, but we still expect to be a playoff football team and we fully expect Kurt Warner to be the quarterback that leads us. That has not changed."
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NCAA Football Betting : USC's reward: Top spot in Top 25NEW YORK (AP) -By staying away from the cupcakes, Southern California earned itself a slim new ranking.
No. 1 always seems to fit USC.
Southern California jumped two spots to No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 on Tuesday, rewarded by voters for opening the season with a dominant performance on the road against a BCS conference opponent.
Georgia and Ohio State, the preseason Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, started their seasons with glorified scrimmages at home against FCS (formerly I-AA) teams. USC, however, traveled across country to face Virginia and could not have been more impressive in a 52-7 victory.
Georgia fell to No. 2 and Ohio State to No 3.
"We realize that rankings so early in a season are certainly fluid. But rankings do help establish a pecking order for things later in the season," USC coach Pete Carroll said in a statement. "As for moving into the No. 1 spot, it's nice to know that people think highly of our team."
Since reaching No. 1 on Dec. 7, 2003, the final-regular season AP poll of that season, USC has been No. 1 in 39 polls, by far the most of any team during that time.
"Some have said the voters are taking our schedule into consideration," Carroll said. "Our philosophy has always been to schedule outstanding opponents. We need to play challenging games like we just did, traveling across the country to open the season at Virginia. Games like that bring out our best and make us stronger as a team."
The latest voting was close. USC received 21 first-place votes and 1,539 points from the 65-member media panel. Georgia had 20 first-place votes and 1,506 points. Ohio State got 15 first-place votes and 1,497 points.
"I'd say we've evolved as pollsters," said Stewart Mandel of SI.com, who moved USC up to No. 1. "In the past, voters just kind of automatically moved teams up and kept teams where they were if they won."
Georgia beat Georgia Southern 45-21 on Saturday and Ohio State opened with a 43-0 win over Youngstown State.
"There's a bit of a growing backlash for the amount of teams that open with I-AA cupcakes," said Mandel, whose book "Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls" chronicles college football's controversies. "To see a team [USC] go on the road and play a New Year's Day bowl team from last season, and not only play them but destroy them, how could you not reward that team?"
USC also jumped past Georgia to No. 1 in the USA Today coaches' poll, which has the same top five as the AP poll.
"It's definitely a privilege to be No. 1. But it's not heartbreaking to me if we drop," Georgia offensive lineman Josh Davis said. "It doesn't matter right now what we're ranked. What matters is our next game and right now, that's Central Michigan. The only time the polls matter is in December. That's when the polls matter."
While the Bulldogs opened easy, their schedule ultimately should be as difficult as any team's. Georgia's big nonconference test is at No. 15 Arizona State on Sept. 20. The Bulldogs also face six Southeastern Conference rivals that've been ranked in the first two polls.
As for Ohio State, the Buckeyes play at USC on Sept. 13 before getting into the Big Ten schedule.
But of the teams in this week's top 10, USC and Texas are the only ones that don't play an FCS opponent, and the Trojans are the only team that doesn't play a team from a non-BCS conference.
Get the latest 2009 BCS Championship odds at MySportsbook.com.
The last team to drop from No. 1 after a victory was USC last season. LSU jumped from No. 2 to No. 1 when it beat Tulane 34-9, the same week the Trojans edged Washington 27-24 on the road.
The last preseason No. 1 team to lose the top spot after winning its opening game was Florida in 2001. The Gators beat Marshall 49-14, but preseason No. 2 Miami opened with a 33-7 victory over Penn State and the Hurricanes jumped to No. 1 with Florida slipping to second.
The next four teams in the new Top 25 stayed the same: No. 4 Oklahoma (two first-place votes), No. 5 Florida (five first-place votes), No. 6 Missouri (one first-place vote), No. 7 LSU (one first-place vote) and No. 8 West Virginia.
No. 9 Auburn and No. 10 Texas each moved up a spot, taking advantage of Clemson's big drop. Clemson, ninth in the preseason, fell out after losing 34-10 to Alabama on Saturday.
Also falling out after losses were Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh and Tennessee.
Moving into the rankings were No. 21 Fresno State, No. 22 Utah, No. 23 UCLA and No. 24 South Carolina.
Alabama moved up 11 spots after its big victory over Clemson.
The second 10 started with No. 11 Wisconsin, followed by Texas Tech, Alabama and Kansas. BYU and Arizona State were tied for 15th. Rivals BYU and Utah are both ranked for the first time since 1996.
South Florida was No. 17, ahead of Oregon, Penn State and Wake Forest at No. 20.
The final five were all the teams to move into the ranking, except for Illinois, which dropped four spots and tied South Carolina for No. 24.
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